Convulsing on the floor, he sensed the dogs’ snapping jaws inches from his face. Confused, they barked and snarled; humans weren’t supposed to twitch like that. As they strained their leads, their handlers leaned back to keep them from tearing into him.
A command rang across the concrete from the far side of the barn: “Off.”
The Dobermans waddled back a few steps and sat, panting around wide grins. Ropes of saliva necklaced the sleek, dark fur of their chests.
Evan rolled his head on the rubber mat, catching an upside-down view of René silhouetted in the opening made by the pushed-back barn door.
He said, “You don’t stop, do you?”
Evan made a noise intended to convey assent.
“No more walks for you. No more exercise. And no more time.”
“Until what?” Evan’s words came out fuzzy.
“Until you wire me my money. Open of business tomorrow.” René continued in and stopped behind the Dobermans, stroking their heads. “Good boys. Good, good boys.”
He fished treats from his pocket and rewarded them.
“Do you like dogs?” René asked Evan.
Evan coughed hoarsely into the mat.
“It’s their loyalty that gets me,” René observed. “Purer than love. You know the joke. Lock your dog and your wife in the trunk of your car for twenty-four hours. When you open it, which one is happy to see you?”
The Dobermans bared their teeth. Their marble eyes stayed locked on Evan, who’d managed to shove himself to a standing position, his hands on his knees. The skin of his neck prickled, angry and raw. Behind Nando, Despi caught his eye, her forehead twisted in anguish. He looked down quickly, not wanting to give away their rapport.
“Put him in his room,” René said to Dex. Then, as he breezed past Evan, “Be showered in time for dinner.”
Evan shook his head, trying to clear the static. Too late he realized he was smirking.
René halted. His face reddened. “Is something amusing, Evan?”
“No.”
“Why are you grinning?”
“Because I get it now.”
“Get what?” René waited, growing impatient. “What do you think you get?”
Evan squared to him. “I think you want to be a psychopath, René. But you’re not. I think what you are is lonely. I think the only way you can get guests to your dinner table is by paying them or forcing them. I think you believe you can buy your way out of your misery, and that isn’t amusing — it’s profoundly fucking pathetic.”
René drew his head back, his chin doubling. His flush deepened, color seeping unevenly along the nipped-and-tucked lines of his face. Then his expression hardened, the vulnerability clamped behind a mask of controlled rage.
He walked across the barn, through the rolling door, and out into the blazing white. Evan was watching him fade into the lightly falling snow when another jolt of the collar cut his legs out from under him.
32
Ready
Evan sat cross-legged on the floor, his shoulders bowed. He hadn’t gotten the car jack. Without the car jack, he couldn’t break out of his room. If he couldn’t break out of his room, he couldn’t help Alison Siegler and the boy.
Evan was down to his last few hours.
He reminded himself how much he could get done in a few hours.
One way or another, he was getting out of this room. And out of this chalet. He would fight his way over the snowy peak of the mountain, leaving a trail of bright arterial blood in his wake.
A noise issued overhead, startling him from his thoughts. The hissing gas had come so much earlier than usual, the sun not yet kissing the western horizon. This was his punishment for laying René bare in the barn — to bed without dinner. René was done taking chances; he was going to knock Evan out and revive him at the deadline in a few hours to make the wire transfer.
Holding his breath, Evan rushed to the sliding glass door and threw it wide. He stepped outside, but the clean air quickly turned bitter, the gas being drawn through the open door. Rushing back inside, he lay on the bed and buried his face in a pillow.
His breathing grew heavy. A wave of grogginess came on. He fought to stay conscious. The hissing finally stopped, but he kept his face buried, waiting for the air to clear.
That’s when he felt the vibration.
The RoamZone beneath the mattress. The boy calling him.
Another vibration signaled the second ring.
Evan lifted his face. He could still taste the halogenated ether riding the back of his throat.
Third ring.
He rolled off the bed, his kneecaps banging the floorboards. Shoved an arm beneath the mattress. Came out with the wrecked RoamZone.
The high-power-density lithium-ion battery was still going strong. The kid’s number guttered across the cracked screen.
Just in time Evan thumbed the green icon and held the phone to his face. Somehow the circuit board held together. “Hello?”
“It’s me.” Same voice as before, but even more hushed.
The connection was bad, static fuzzing the line.
Evan swallowed hard. His head was swimming from the gas he’d inhaled, but he fought his thoughts back online. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I’m trapped here. There’s never enough food. I don’t want this life. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for any of it.”
“What are they doing to you?”
“That’s not even the worst part,” the boy said.
“What is?”
“I’m nothing here. That’s the worst part.” His hushed voice held a kind of awe. “No one cares. If you don’t exist, then it doesn’t matter, right?”
“No. That’s not right. Look. Listen.” Evan blinked hard, rubbed his eyes, forging through the muddle in his head. “Whatever’s being done to you, it’s wrong. It’s not your fault. And you’re not the only one.”
“I know it happens to other kids,” the boy said. “I see it, even. But when it happens to you, it feels like you’re the first person it’s happened to in the whole world.”
“I know.” Evan felt emotion pressing at the back of his face. “You’re resourceful. Scrappy. Like I was.” The ether had loosened his inhibitions. He heard his words drawl, knew he was saying more than he should.
He was supposed to be the Nowhere Man, armored in his role as savior and hero, indomitable and distant and safe.
But right now he felt like none of those things.
The static grew to a roar, and for a moment Evan thought the call had dropped. But then the kid’s voice came back in. “—can’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m scared to. It’s not safe.” A wet breath.
Evan took a breath of his own. Held it. Then, “Can you get out?”
“Nowhere to get to.”
“Find help?”
“No one can help me.”
“Can’t you run away and go to the cops?”
“No. I need you.”
Locked on the third floor of a guarded chalet at the base of a snowy valley, Evan nodded. “I’ll get to you,” he said. “I’m coming soon.”
In the silence he could hear the boy breathing across the phone.
Finally the kid said, “I have to go now. I’ll try ’n’ call back if I can.”
“When you do,” Evan said, “I’ll be ready.”
33
The Inexpressible
Parking Level 3, submerged in a sea of crimson.
Evan is underwater, trapped inside his own locked-down body. His lips stitched shut. Drowning in Jack’s blood.
Jack ripples across from him like some hard-bitten merman. His arm is raised. The fine hairs of his forearm waver like tendrils of seaweed. His finger points at Evan.